Profligate leftist prostitution partying from who knows where. || "It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality." -- JG Ballard. || "You try running with your sagging breasts down the middle of the fucking street. People will throw a blanket over you. And grab you. And call the police. For fuck's sake." -- Germaine Greer.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Meet the new boss.

Put yourself for a moment in the shoes of Tommy Robinson, or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, or whatever the now former leader of the English Defence League's real name is. From once being a small time member of the BNP, he succeeded in creating an organisation which became the most powerful far-right street movement since the National Front. You can't properly enjoy such a position of influence though when you're constantly assailed by your opponents as being a racist dedicated to undermining community cohesion, to the point where your friends are (allegedly) refused service just for being with you, or indeed when you apparently get ejected from a Milton Keynes casino on the grounds that you're a thug and therefore not welcome at the roulette wheel. Why anyone would want to be in a Milton Keynes casino in the first place is a good question, but let's leave that to one side.

On a personal level, as alluded to above, Robinson had become too notorious to lead a normal life when he wasn't with his beer-swilling mates encouraging and fomenting hate. After all, what is this country coming to when the leader of a far-right organisation whose members have been convicted of countless offences can't pick his children up without getting nervous glances? Abandoning a moribund movement with the help of a counter-extremism think-tank while not renouncing a single thing you've previously said makes absolutely perfect sense.

"Persuading" Robinson and Kevin Carroll to abandon their movement suits both sides. It means Robinson can join up with his even more extreme pals in America, as now seems likely, his baggage with the neo-Nazis among the EDL a thing of the past, while Maajid Nawaz can claim he's pulled off something that will benefit the country as a whole. In fact, he's handed legitimacy to a convicted criminal still facing further charges, and who hasn't altered his virulent views as much as looked to rebrand them. The problem they now face is that this discredits them equally, and Quilliam has a lot further to fall than Robinson does.